Editor’s Note: No market divides analysts as much as oil right now. Are record prices the result of speculators or a fundamental imbalance in demand and supply? Is the bubble about to burst or can oil prices climb further?

Editor’s note: There’s a commodities bull markets raging in Australia, says Dan Denning. You could tap into it by buying into the big mining companies. But for maximum profit you could go for junior miners and mining infrastructure stocks.

Editor’s Note: “There’s nothing like a $140 reality check to start your day,” says Dan Denning in The Daily Reckoning Australia. But could oil prices be the next Yahoo. Are oil prices all about hype just as troubled internet search engine’s stock price was? Are we heading for a major reversal?

Dan’s right about one thing, at least. Crude oil prices are sky-high. Prices hit $142 a barrel today.

Crude contracts on the Nymex for August delivery his $142.26 a barrel before — only a few hours after it breached the $141 level.

Australia’s minerals industry is booming.

But Dan Denning in The Daily Reckoning Australia sees two threats on the horizon that could derail Australia’s commodities boom. One possibility is that Australia’s boom will end where America’s depression begins. The other, more likely, scenario is an inflationary melt up.

The extent of the boom was underlined yesterday by an Australian government report predicting export earnings from commodities would rise a whopping 40% $201bn in the financial year to June 2009, led by a 48% surge in mineral exports to A$178bn — the biggest rise in four decades.

Editor’s Note: Sky-high crude oil prices and gas prices are becoming something of a national obsession.

They’ve also becoming the mother of all political punchbags. Washington’s finest are scrambling over each other to be seen as championing ‘ordinary Americans’ over the big, bad oil companies and, even worse, the oil speculators.